“Dear users, we are very happy to tell you that V-RAY for Cinema 4D is now official part of the Chaosgroup family. You can click on the banner above to come to the new opened V-Ray for Cinema 4D user section in the Chaosgroup forum, where I an Fabio will also help you in future. Of course we also continue to help you here, this forum here will stay a render related c4d user place for all type of rendering on C4D, mainly V-Ray and Corona based- for helping each other, exchanging C4D user experience and for new Masterclasses.”

Max version has a perpetual option, but I don’t see any maintenance options so don’t know how that works? I am waiting for some clarification on these things, as I only hope my 10 node licence gets migrated as a perpetual licence in which I only pay a maintenance on the workstation licence, not to rent the 10 nodes I already own in order to move past Vray 3.6?

As far as I understand the pricing page, you can migrate to VRay 3.7 for free (although this is the same feature set so apparently only the R20 support and the license checking are different?) and not pay anything until Jan 15th 2020. After that, you pay 1420€ per year plus tax (using the calculator on the pricing page for 10 render nodes), which e.g. for Germany (19% sales tax) would be 1689.80€ annually.

Render nodes are explicitly no longer free, and I can’t see perpetual licenses being offered, but I’m sure this will be clarified in time.

As far as I understand the pricing page, you can migrate to VRay 3.7 for free (although this is the same feature set so apparently only the R20 support and the license checking are different?) and not pay anything until Jan 15th 2020. After that, you pay 1420€ per year plus tax (using the calculator on the pricing page for 10 render nodes), which e.g. for Germany (19% sales tax) would be 1689.80€ annually.

Render nodes are explicitly no longer free, and I can’t see perpetual licenses being offered, but I’m sure this will be clarified in time.

So If you already own vray 3.6 which is the same as 3.7, and already are using it right now in r20 what are you getting free? Would you be getting free rental for one year with some additions, fixes, features in which at Jan 2020 you may not be able to afford so return back to your old perpetual licence that is locked to r20. R 21 comes out you can only use Vray in r20 and have no Vray for future versions of C4D. Regardless how fast development goes, and how many features get added makes no difference if you cant afford it.

Push the low earning customers away, push out the hobbyist, and thoes whom do 3D part time.

You are already able to use 3.6 in R20? I must look that up, I didn’t get any notice on that.
Anyway, you are right of course. They are pricing us out. I won’t be able to pay around a thousand bucks per year for the three to four render nodes I would employ, and staying on R19 forever (let’s say R20 if I can still get a VRay version for that) is not really feasible.

What’s worse is that I am not aware of a renderer that would provide an alternative I can afford, and the internal C4D renderers are all catastrophically slow for what I wish to do. This new pricing schema may not just have priced me out of VRay, it may have pushed me out of C4D.

Has anyone been through the Chaos migration request yet? The wording doesn’t fully make sense to me, and they say that ‘You can only submit a migration request for your existing V-Ray Cinema 4D licenses once’… So does that mean if you make a mistake your screwed?

The bit I don’t get is that they ask for your existing V-Ray for C4D licenses… I’m not interested in getting Vray for C4d for old Cinema versions, only the current R20. but I don’t have a vray license key for this version as it was never available from Laublab…

I don’t want a beta render engine. I want a solid, production proof render that does not cost me a kidney. Arnold was the bomb until it was acquired by AD and turned into a subscription scheme.
There is basically no more « cheap » option for Mac indie users. No wonder most c4d users are switching to PCs with redshift or octane.

The bit I don’t get is that they ask for your existing V-Ray for C4D licenses… I’m not interested in getting Vray for C4d for old Cinema versions, only the current R20. but I don’t have a vray license key for this version as it was never available from Laublab…

See below; they aren’t asking for VrayforC4D licenses; they’re asking for the 11 digit C4D license codes that we submit for most C4D licenses:

Either (A) they’re asking for your R18/R19/R20 C4D codes so that they can generate your new Vray licenses all at once, or (B) they’re asking for shop owners to send all the license keys for all their users at once instead of sending them piecemeal.

Right now VrayforC4D was becoming less and less viable for commercial users outside the narrow walls of archvis. Consider that Greyscale Gorilla - perhaps the largest promoters of C4D at the moment - won’t even mention Vray as a potential render engine, let alone support it with their products.

It sucks that they’re pricing out hobbyists, but there’s so many free, high end software packages on the market right now to use in their stead. Yes, there will be a learning curve, but that’s the nature of the beast.

As for Redshift being labeled as expensive, I beg to differ. The point of it is to use a computer with multiple GPUs. A single node-locked license will support up to 8 GPUs. Even with one strong GPU, it is a very fast render engine. I’m using it with a single 1070 currently and I will not look back to CPU rendering.